MSNBC Guest: Conservatives Need to Figure Out How Transgender Bathroom Debate Is Different From 1960s Civil Rights Issue

Leah Rigueur, assistant professor at Harvard Kennedy School, reacted Saturday to President Barack Obama’s order for public education facilities to allow students to use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with instead of the one that matches their biological gender.

Rigueur said conservatives “really need to figure out” how the bathroom debate is “different from the Civil Rights movement” of the 1960s, adding that it should not be a “radical” issue.

“The interesting thing to me here is this is a hot button issue amongst conservatives, right? This is not necessarily an issue that needs to be — it shouldn’t be a radical thing, and what conservatives really need to do, right, what they really need to figure out is how is this different from the Civil Rights movement of, say, the 1960s, right? Much of the language that is being used is identical to language that is being used in the 1960s,” Rigueur explained.